JEDDAH, 25 March 2004 — Dozens of Indonesian pilgrims and overstayers from other places are camping outside the deportation center in Jeddah in an effort to be repatriated to their respective countries free of charge. Surrounded by baggage and souvenirs of their journey, they mill around endlessly, packing and repacking their belongings for lack of anything better to do.
This temporary camp in the city’s Old Airport area and its outpost behind the low concrete block of nearby pilgrim buildings, which Arab News visited yesterday, seems to house mainly women. They use whatever they can scavenge to build shelters from the sun and wind. Blankets and sheets are hooked onto bushes or attached with string to the wall of the official compound, whose entrances are guarded by stern-faced officials.
Col. Fahd Al-Wadyani said his department deported more than 10,000 overstayers last year. “All of them had been repatriated according to the rules and this will be the case with the rest,” he said.
Breakfast for the squatters consists of a small portion of cold rice and a few scraps of cold vegetables served on grease-proof paper. Many spend their time securing their loose tenting or just talking to each other.
One overstayer, Muhammad Tam from Nigeria, told Okaz newspaper recently that he had stayed in the Kingdom after Umrah to wait for Haj.
“It is very expensive for me to travel back home and back again to Saudi Arabia to perform Haj,” he said.
Now that Haj season has ended, Tam wants the Kingdom to fork out for his trip home as he is currently broke. “I want to go back but I don’t have the money,” he said. “I wish they would send me at their cost.”
One of the men, who told us that the majority of the stranded people were Indonesian, said he was Thai and was trying to go home after Umrah. Unable to communicate much either in Arabic or English, he indicated that he had no exit papers and even though he wanted to leave, he was stranded.
Occasionally, heavily barred white container trucks rumble in to the compound, with faces peering out through the minuscule windows. It was impossible to establish if these were new arrivals or the “lucky” ones about to be deported.
— Additional input by Mahmoud Ahmad
